The East Bay Regional Park District is cautioning park visitors that mushrooms popping up during the rainy season may contain dangerous toxins.

The Waltham Public Library hosted naturalist Jonathan Kranz, who led a small audience through the joys and practicalities of foraging for mushrooms in New England.

Yet it's some of the plain-looking ones that are the most poisonous. A few bites of the European destroying angel (Amanita virosa) can kill you. But far more often, mushrooms give life.

Amanita phalloides (the Death Cap) and Amanita ocreata (the Western Destroying Angel). Both are robust, handsome mushrooms that grow near oak trees, and both contain lethal toxins.” The article goes ...